


Hammered Down

by Avelera



Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Brainwashing, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Destiny, M/M, POV Second Person, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 14:09:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1019552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avelera/pseuds/Avelera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is no destiny in it. When the blood flows and the shots are muffled by the hiss of the silencer it is not because this fate was meant for you. No hero, no science experiment or god is this boy from Brooklyn. Nothing holy has put you here. When the target dies it was not because you were meant to do it, another would have taken your place.</p><p>You are here because of him, in every sense.<br/> <br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	Hammered Down

_ The Asset _

Once you thought you would die for him.

Your back on the cold metal slab says you still might.

There is no destiny in it. When the blood flows and the shots are muffled by the hiss of the silencer it is not because this fate was meant for you. No hero, no science experiment or god is this kid from Brooklyn. Nothing holy has put you here. When the target dies it is not because you were meant to do it. Another would have taken your place.

If there is any thread of fate that binds you it is only to him. The first knot was tied when you wiped the blood from your mouth and stood, blocking the weak and sickly child from his attacker and readying your fists. You felt a stirring by your side and the boy was beside you, glaring and unafraid. He shook your hand after, was sure to thank you with blue eyes that knew nothing of resentment. You said any time, and knew in the hollows of your being it was true.

It’s hard to remember those eyes now. There is only a cavern now inside you where echo the voices of ghosts, snatches of dreams and screams and memories. They are darkening, flickering out one by one.

It is getting colder.

You are here because of him. You fell because of him and even though you cannot remember why, your body remembers when life ceased to be flying and became a long, sickening drop.

Perhaps it is his destiny you are living and you are only caught in it, dragged behind and around and down. When you fell it was into ice and to ice you return as the liquid closes around you. It fills you, floods you and washes away another memory in the dark. Blue fades to black.

Once it made you angry, but it is hard to be angry when there is nothing to brace against, even the hottest fire cannot survive the cold forever. You are not sorry to forget the fall, and the walls of your anger come crumbling down in the darkness. That too carries some relief, the loss of it leaving only a trace of bitterness at the back of your mouth.

Once you thought you would die for him. There is no longer a face or a name to that thought, only the hollow sense that you'll know him when you see him, you could have found him without the orders, you could have found him blind.

You are here because of him.

In every sense.

* * *

_The Captain  _

They will never understand that for you it wasn’t seventy years, it was only one night.

You awoke to a world like a bad dream.  They think it is the noise, the frenzy, the technology that rocks you back on your heels, that leaves you staring blankly into the distance in stolen moments when there is finally a chance to breathe. You don’t point out to them that nothing has really changed. Your generation lives side by side with theirs in this loud new world. There is still bad and good, there is still war and bullies and victims who stand up no matter how many times they’re hammered down. There are still people who can be better than they are and that will never change.  But you humor them, and smile, and ask for another demonstration when a glance would have been enough. Howard’s creations had been years ahead of these, and he knew it, but he had still liked it when you were impressed. It would be too easy to be a bully here, to be dismissive of their accomplishments. So you smile and ask to see it again.

There’s plenty of time.

You’ve begun to suspect you cannot die.

That’s the real nightmare of it.

Because you know you don’t want to die, know you won’t choose it, and probably won’t need to. It will find you when the time is right. But you are overdue. Again and again you’ve been overdue. You have dodged both bullets and time far too often for any man. Yet here you are, until your Maker calls you home.

Maybe He never will.

It wasn’t just seventy years, it was a Rapture, and it had passed you by. It was waking to find everyone you’d known or loved or might have come to love was dead, and no amount of strength would have saved them. It was the loss of second chances, of dances, of funerals. When the slate is wiped clean you keep walking forward, or so you tell yourself. You are the only smudge left on the board.

You move on. You leave the past to its rest.

You never expected it to wake up.

* * *

  _The Asset_

There is a fault line running through you. A flaw in an otherwise perfect weapon. It splits the hollow space within you where now echoes only orders and plans, how to kill and who to kill the only thoughts left in that empty place. There is nothing to reflect your orders or interrupt them but a vein of weakness. This is why you must sleep, they say, or you will buckle beneath it. You will shatter. Strong as you are, you are also brittle, and every strike, every pull of the trigger reverberates through you.

( _Sometimes you think that something is wrong, and maybe it isn’t you_.)

Once you stayed out too long, they say though you don’t remember it. You went AWOL after a mission for almost a month, wandering Brooklyn. They needed a whole squad to bring you back and you feel something, satisfaction, at the thought. Even broken you would not fall easily. They took you back and put you down. There were no more missions in America after that, not for a long time. The ones you had were limited to a week, which might have been troublesome, but you enjoyed the challenge. You learned to adapt to a new decade in a matter of hours: clothes, mannerism, slang. Amazing how swift the adjustment when there is nothing inside you, when you can bend to the world without resistance or fear. 

When you awake the next time you have new masters. This is not unusual of itself, except they are sending you to America. Something has changed, or perhaps they do not know about your missing month, but that does not seem right. They know something, something more than you do and though they give you nothing but your orders you see it in their exchanged glances. There is something more waiting for you there. A spark of irritation flares. It’s not the first time your orders have left out details of danger or numbers. It has never mattered in the end, but the charade is an annoyance, part of a world of ego that you no longer have time for.

Better they had told you. Better you were not running from one of the targets, the one you’ve been told it’s too early to kill, when the faultline that runs through your core _spasms_ with a single discordant note like a cracking bell. You hear the whistle of his shield through the air, and your instincts tell you to keep running, to swerve from its path and let it pass you. Your instincts have never failed you before but just when that fault within you _flairs_ and your instincts hit a wall of resistance, they falter. You falter, and turn, and snatch the spinning shield from the air.

It feels right in your hand.

* * *

  _The Captain_

It’s Bucky.

The mask is back on now, but there was no mistaking him. The metal arm takes on horrible significance. Did he lose it in the fall? Too many questions, too many years between now and what you have come to think of simply as the Fall. He could have lost it any number of ways and that makes it worse, that there is so much now that you don’t know about this man. He is fast, brutal and more deadly than anyone you know except one. You stop. You can’t hurt him even if he’s trying to kill you. And maybe they knew that. There must be some destiny in this. Another man with a plan that brought you both here. It can’t be random or they wouldn’t have chosen _him._

There’s arrogance to that thought, but you don’t have time to dwell on that now. What you feel now, growing beneath desperation and terror that numb your limbs, is the beginning of rage. That someone _did_ _this_ to him, that someone took your friend and wiped him clean and twisted him up until he was the creature of metal and darkness and knives, who looks at you without recognition.

Someone did this to him.

The alternative does not bear thinking about.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! While this doesn't perfectly match the film, it fed a lot of my later Steve/Bucky fics with its sentiments. I hope you enjoyed, please consider leaving a comment.


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